Today Butch tangled with a porcupine, and ended up with quills in his jaw. I removed what I could see, but I suspect a quill broken off under the skin, so tomorrow we are off to the vet. On the positive side, he had the 38th pheasant of the season shot over him today. Update, the vet found one quill that I overlooked and we will be back out after pheasant in the morning.

Last edited by stubblejumper on Tue Oct 11, 2016 2:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

What's with the porkies this year? We haven't seen a porcupine for years, but have already had two encounters this fall. First one we could deal with, but the second time it cost $150 bucks to get the vet to take out two broken quills which were under the skin on pup's jaw. Got whiffed by a skunk a couple of weeks ago, but got away with just a little perfume.

Crusty snow and ice made for two hours of hard going today, but we did manage a limit of pheasant, which puts the season total at 40 pheasants shot over Butch. With the season not yet half over, we should reach a total of at least 70 birds, but with tougher conditions, I have less requests to hunt with us now. The ice and snow was hard on the dog's feet, so I am going to look into possibly getting him some boots for these conditions. Most importantly, no encounters with porcupines today.

The drive is one thing that everyone notices with Butch, as another forum member that I hunt with has said repeatedly, there is no quit in the pup. Yesterday he worked one small patch of timber for several minutes and pointed a few times , but I could not see or flush a bird. Finally, when I was beginning to wonder if the bird was still in the area, it flushed. He knew that there was a bird there, and he was not going to give up until he found it. Many times, he has gone into the thick timber and pursued a bird in brush so thick that we could not see him at times, and he works until he points that bird, or it leaves the brush into the field to escape him. He often ends up with abrasions from the brush, which is the main reason that I ordered the skid plate for him. I see a lot of dogs where we hunt pheasant, and many aren't wearing skid plates, but then many of those dogs don't go into the thick brush either. We have picked up a good number of birds that those dogs missed as a result.

Last edited by stubblejumper on Tue Oct 18, 2016 11:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

Our pheasant hunting is mostly in alfalfa fields with many hedgerows and stands of brush. Most of the birds we find are in the brush, or in the hedge rows. with some in the long grass or alfalfa. I only get to hunt stubble fore Sharptails and Hungarian partridges. The skid plate really helps in the brush, as Butch tends to just crash through it.